Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday January 03, 2013 @03:00PM
from the fairly-uneventful-on-the-surface dept.

itwbennett writes "According to an ITworld report, 'Google has agreed to change some of its business practices, including allowing competitors access to some standardized technologies, to resolve a U.S. Federal Trade Commission antitrust complaint against the company.' This includes 'allow[ing] competitors access to standards-essential patents the company acquired along with its purchase of Motorola Mobility.' Also among the business practices Google has agreed to stop is 'scraping Web content from rivals and allegedly passing it off as its own, said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.'"SlashCloud has some more details, including links to the agreement itself and Google's soft-pedaling description of "voluntary product changes."

You think Google lost here? The FTC has been trying for half a decade to bring an anti-trust case against Google, and at the end of it Google has agreed (not even been ordered) to change a few business practices. Google won. And quite frankly, the fact that this is the best the FTC could do against them would indicate that the FTC simply didn't have a case.

You mean how Google is required by law to comply when ordered by a judge or that Google is one of the few corps that actively try to not only notify the end user that the government is requesting data on them, but Google has actually used its own time and money to fight judges who attempted to seal requests, keeping Google from notifying the end user of such requests.

Yeah, bad bad Google. Not to say they're flawless, but they're not conspiring.

The only reason they completely overpaid for Motorola Mobility was for their patent portfolio. You could argue they have lost $12.5 billion.

The limitations in the no-injunction rule are fairly narrow; they don't prevent Google from getting license revenue, and they don't prevent Google from seeking injunctions if the other party doesn't agree to a specific set of commitments regarding actually paying FRAND licensing fees once they are settled. And they only apply to standards-essential patents. So, there

You think Google lost here? The FTC has been trying for half a decade to bring an anti-trust case against Google

I don't think that's really all that true; if the FTC was trying to bring a case, it wouldn't agree to a Consent Order, and it would just bring a case.

Certain Google competitors have been pressing the FTC to bring a case, mostly about "search bias", and secondarily and more recently about use of standards-essential patents. The FTC, after investigating, has decided -- unanimously -- to drop the "search bias" issue, and -- narrowly, on a 3-2 vote -- to impose fairly limited restrictions in a Consent Order relating to the use of standards-essential patents, basically saying that Google has to give the other party a clear opportunity to commit to accepting a court determination of FRAND terms, where Google may include a requirement for reciprocal licensing, before it seeks an injunction.

This isn't a loss for the FTC or Google, but it may be a loss for the Google competitors that have been pushing for antitrust action.

I think allegedly is used correctly. Maybe if it read " 'scraping Web content from rivals and sheepishly passing it off as its own, said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.' Then I would be a bit confused:)

That said, the language of the TFS and timothy's editorializing Google as "soft-pedaling" are pretty lame click-trolling. The biggest complaint was the search results (not mentioned in TFS, or even the slashcloud article at all). The FRAND patent stuff was a recent addition to the now-closed investigation.

"Allegedly" because, even though Google is agreeing not to do something, it isn't admitting that it did anything.This is the regulatory and rhetorical mess that results from settlements with no admission of guilt.

This is "settle" in the layman's terms as opposed to legal terms. Technically, the case against Google hadn't even been brought yet. The FTC is walking away because they know they don't have a case because, quite fankly, a lot of the complaints were ridiculous. Oh, youtube is the first result? What a freaking surprise, it's the largest video site on the net by an order of magnitude. Not to mention that Google services often aren't the top result in searches for those services. There are legitimate issues with some of their API's and some of their ad selling, but nothing that comes close to warranting the kind of expenses that a federal anti-trust case would generate (both for Google and the FTC).

Hence, most regulatory actions get settled because these companies are too big to prosecute.If we funded our regulatory bodies like we fund the military, we could afford an army of lawers to keep corporate America from stepping out of line.

Google essentially won here, and that's exactly how it should be. The government has no place telling Google what it can and cannot do on its own website - they're guaranteed freedom of speech, and Google.com is the outlet for that speech. They have every right to order search results however the hell they want to, and it's good to see that the feds didn't decide otherwise.

The other concessions have a bit more basis in reality, but it's bullshit that Motorola can't seek injunctions for technology that made

Google unfairly ranking their own products higher on their search engines would be an abuse of monopoly power. It's not as damaging as a state-run newspaper praising the government, but it has a lot of the same effects.

Their search information is presented as a collection of unbiased facts. It's not like they're saying "Like Google? Try Google Plus" - it's more like responding to search queries for "most popular social network" with a link to Google+ as the first result.

The browser ballot screen that the EU requires Microsoft to use shows the top 5 browsers in random order. They aren't even allowed to put their own first.

If you are a monopoly, you are not free to do things other businesses are free to do. For example, you are restricted in using your monopoly in one market to influence another market. This was what Microsoft did when they gave away their browser with their (monopoly) OS. In the same way, Google seems to have a monopoly in the search engine market. If they placed their own products higher than their competitors, that could be using their monopoly to influence other markets, and that could be illegal. Whether

Google unfairly ranking their own products higher on their search engines would be an abuse of monopoly power.

It might have been, if they did that, but the FTC investigated that claim and didn't find support for it, saying [ftc.gov]:

In sum, we find that the evidence presented at this time does not support the allegation
that Google’s display of its own vertical content at or near the top of its search results page was a
product design change undertaken without a legitimate business justification. Rather, we
conclude that Google’s display of its own content could plausibly be viewed as an improvement
in the overall quality of Google’s search product. Similarly, we have not found sufficient
evidence that Google manipulates its search algorithms to unfairly disadvantage vertical websites
that compete with Google-owned vertical properties. Although at points in time various vertical
websites have experienced demotions, we find that this was a consequence of algorithm changes
that also could plausibly be viewed as an improvement in the overall quality of Google’s search
results.

Although our careful review of the evidence in this matter supports our decision to close
this investigation, we will remain vigilant and continue to monitor Google for conduct that may
harm competition and consumers.

My personal opinion (that I am sure can be picked at) is that if what google does with previews violates copyright, then so does (did?) the newsagent that puts a copy of the newspaper in their window. There is no doubt in either case where the original content comes from *and* it's for promo purposes.

My personal opinion (that I am sure can be picked at) is that if what google does with previews violates copyright, then so does (did?) the newsagent that puts a copy of the newspaper in their window.

Congratulations, you have proven your nickname to be valid. Using the item itself to sell the item is legal regardless of any copyrights or design patents. You can't use its likeness, but you can use it, so you can put the item in the window but you can't put a picture of the window in the paper.

They own Zagat, and the Google Places reviews come from Google+ users. They used to scrape snippets of text from around the web - and linked and cited them, but never entire reviews unless they were so short as to be not very useful.

All Google agreed was that the patents it holds which are essential to the implementation of certain mobile-telephony standards will be licensed under FRAND terms [wikipedia.org]. They didn't agree to let them be used for free or anything.

Why weren't those already the terms? Standards bodies are supposed to, if they're doing their job, approve standards with some kind of FRAND licensing condition, in order for the standards to actually function as standards. The point of a standard is that everyone making a device with a certain kind of functionality is supposed to conform to certain agreed ("standard") behavior. To do that, they have to be able to legally able to implement the standard, which means any patents essential to the implementation need to be generally available to any third party for licensing, on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.

This is a political statement, the politicians look like they're doing something, Google appears to have been reprimanded, but in reality, no change was made. The patents are already and have been under FRAND. The real FRAND, not the Apple definition ("F stands for Free!")

All Google agreed was that the patents it holds which are essential to the implementation of certain mobile-telephony standards will be licensed under FRAND terms [wikipedia.org]. They didn't agree to let them be used for free or anything.
Why weren't those already the terms?

Google is required by the Consent Order to make a very specific offer regarding FRAND licensing (to the point that the order includes fill-in-the-blank demand letters Google is to use) before seeking injunctive relief; the FTC sees this as a correction to Google/MMI's past approach in these cases where, in the FTC's view, Google/MMI didn't do as much as it should have regarding seeking a FRAND licensing commitment before seeking injunctive relief.

Its not really a big loss for Google, since Google would be quite happy for other parties to have the option of making the commitment that the letter offers instead of going through an injunction process (which allows Google to demand reciprocal licensing as part of the offer), and even moreso Google would be quite happy with the FTC's stated intent that the proposed approach would become a general model for handling of disputes centered on the use of standards-essential patents.

"regarding the specific allegations [ftc.gov] that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the Commission.. The evidence did not demonstrate that Google's actions in this area stifled competition in violation of U.S. law".

MS didn't just get nailed for bundling IE, but for strong-arming Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. to not allow another browser and to not sell PCs without Windows. Additionally they tied IE into the OS itself in such a way as consumer had less choice. With Google, it's a matter of typing http://someothersearchengine.whatever/ [someothers...e.whatever] to use an alternative service. To replace Windows it was a matter of installing another OS entirely. Context and scale matters, not just the bundling of products.

Wow the case and its verdict really talks a load about the FTC initiative to drive transparency and equal access to new technology. BTW Google is fighting a similar case in EU. Details Here [cbronline.com]